Last week I received another great example of Participatory Marketing at its finest via an email alert from Upromise. The alert was an invite to attend a live seminar in NY on March 24th called Tuition Tuesday. The 2 hour event, held in conjunction with Leap -- a non-profit organization that works to improve the quality of public education through art-based learning, promises to offer advice on planning for and managing rising college expenses. This is particularly relevant given the hit that many of us have taken on our 529 plans. In addition to the opportunity to mingle and converse with other portfolio battered families, the effort also includes a video contest called Tuition Tales. Tuition Tales gives participating individuals the chance to win $10,000 for college. Reaching across generations, the contest encourages students, parents, grandparents and friends to get involved and create a personal 30-second video detailing why they or somebody they know deserves $10,000 for college. Submissions across three categories (saving for college, in college now, paying it back) are due by May 5, 2009 and voting online begins May 12, 2009. Participating individuals are also encouraged to rally their friends and families to vote. Winners will be announced on May 20, 2009. You can sign up for additional details about the program via email alerts at the Tuition Tales website. 

For Upromise the program is not only an opportunity to engage existing Upromise members and to build upon their community efforts, but to extend the visibility of its brand to friends and family who they hope will also sign up to help those members save. Overall a good example of how a community focused program combined with a “social” contest and email marketing program join together to form a robust participatory marketing program that will help Upromise drives memberships, engagement and savings activity.

New Year’s Resolutions

 

While New Year’s resolutions are normally for personal goals, given the economy and continued growth in the unemployment rate, it is time we made some for where we work.  Here are a few I think will take you the furthest in a tough economy. 

 

1. Be Collaborative: Tough times require big ideas.  Communication and brainstorming is more important than ever and two (or more) heads are better than one.  Build a cross-functional think tank within your organization and set some goals that can help your organization be more efficient or drive more revenue.  Those goals can be as simple as improving your marketing process or cleaning your customer list, or more complex -- like developing new products or testing a new innovative social media marketing effort.  Either way, go for it.
2. Think Strategically:  Most companies are aggressively cutting costs.  If you are in marketing, that often means cutting programs or negotiating down the costs with existing vendors.  You may even conduct a RFP (Request for Proposal) review process to make sure your current vendors offer the best solution at the best price.  All pretty standard reactions.  However, I encourage you to think broader: Are there other solutions which you didn’t originally consider that perhaps you should, i.e. bringing email in-house vs. using an Email Service Provider?  What are the long-term goals and objectives for your organization and do existing providers align with those needs? Now is a great time to make those key decisions that can help your company build a greater competitive advantage when things turn around.
3. Embrace Your Customers:  Whether they are internal or external customers,  success is nearly always tied to delighting your target.  Consider conducting a customer experience audit, form an advisory panel, survey and interview customers, and then commit to making improvements.
4. Adopt a Start-Up Mentality:  Today’s environment requires marketers from all sized organizations to think more like a start up.  Every program, every cent spent on acquiring and retaining customers should be examined and optimized.  Take email as an example.  Simply adding a forward-to-a-friend option can potentially extend the life, efficiency and ROI of an email message.  In fact, JupiterResearch once estimated that companies that considered viral marketing and customer satisfaction when identifying and targeting customers, could reduce customer acquisition costs by 27% and increase average order size by up to 60%.  But that is just part of it.  For viral marketing to really take off, you have to have an offer that is exciting and compelling. And don’t forget that all forward-to-a friend campaigns must comply with CAN SPAM requirements.
5. Think “Participation”:  We’ve detailed some great examples on how participatory marketing has extended the reach and success of marketing programs on this blog.  So whether it’s a TV ad campaign like Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” that encourages users to upload video of themselves or The Limited’s design contest that engaged thousand of users, think about how you can add a little participation to your existing campaigns and communications to achieve greater success in ’09. 

Wishing you a prosperous ‘09

I recently was preparing for a speech at Pace University around participatory marketing and came across an interesting posting on Nick Burcher’s blog highlighting the top 50 facebook fan pages.  Not surprisingly it looked something like this:

 

1. Barack Obama
2. Michael Phelps
3. Batman: The Dark Knight
4. facebook
5. Coldplay
6. Windows Live Messenger
7. Adam Sandler
8. YouTube
9. Apple Students
10. Linkin Park

 

25. Victoria’s Secret Pink

30. Addidas Originals

32. OREO Cookies

45. Red Flavour Pringles

46. Ferrero Rocher

 

Interesting collection, no?  During my presentation at Pace University in a room filled with hundreds of local undergraduate students, I asked a few questions to kick off the discussion.

 

How many of you subscribe to emails from the brands you have relationships with? 33% of the hands went up.

 

How many receive text messages from the brands you have relationships with?

10% of the hands go up.

 

How many of you became a fan of Barack Obama’s on facebook?

40% raise their hands.

 

How many of you became a fan or visit the facebook page of a brand you have a relationship with?

0% raise their hands.

 

So what’s going on here? A reasonable person might assume facebook is basically a bunch of young guys who love sports and junk food and who go online using their Apple computers to look at hot girls – and that is just about it.  Quite a social commentary, no?  But what if you are one of the thousands of brands trying to figure out social media and advertising? What does this mean for you?  Can you be successful on facebook?  Well if you’re not selling music, sports, the latest cool gadget or “entertainment”, then you just might be SOL? Or maybe not – facebook's Connect is interesting? 

 

My Take? Traditional advertising on existing peer-to-peer social networks will be like TV – ignored.  As my partner says - it is like going to a bar with your friends and someone comes up and tries to sell you a new car.  Not going to happen.  I believe it won’t take too much longer before we see a host of new networks appearing dedicated to helping consumers better manage their brand interactions.  Media including the staples (email, TV, print, etc.) will also be more participatory, encouraging users to engage with brands in ways that create value and benefit both the customer and brand.  Commercial networks will not only bring a sense of organization to the crazy amount of relationships we all must manage, but they will finally align the purchase process with the consumer mindset to create a commercial environment that is controlled by the consumer.  My biggest hope is that my partner and I can be part of that explosion -- and we are working on it.  Let me know what you think.

As we’ve defined in the past, Participatory Marketing is all about getting people involved in promoting your brand.  One of the most common and effective marketing tactics used to engage prospects and customers are contests.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that marketers faced with declining budgets and sales are turning to this participatory marketing staple in the hopes of engaging users.  But what’s so different about contests today is that most have a social media twist in an effort to further extend one’s message and stretch one’s budget.  What’s not so different is that they continue to use traditional media (i.e. TV, print, email, online banners, PR, etc.) to promote them.  Take The Limited, who begun promoting a new e-commerce store with a viral marketing contest and campaign.  The program invites users to create “The Ultimate Outfit” using The Limited’s products and share those outfits by posting them on social networking sites (i.e. facebook and MySpace).  Users can also communicate directly on The Limited’s website by sharing their thoughts about the outfits they created and where users could wear them.  In addition, visitors are encouraged to vote on posted entries.  As of today, the contest, which began on November 5^th, has 7,900 entries and 520,000 page views.  According to DMNews, The Limited’s outfits have been posted to MySpace a total of 25,000 times. 

The Limited will choose a winning outfit at the conclusion of the campaign which will end in approximately 25 days.  The winner will receive an all expenses paid trip with a friend to Chicago, Dallas or Miami to meet a personal stylist along with a $2,000 shopping spree. 

 

Nicely done.  Also note one of the first pieces of information The Limited requests is email - which they will use as the primary tool to keep the conversation going.  

If you’ve seen a cool participatory marketing program in action, let us know by posting a comment or sending us an email at info@thepmn.org.